Senior Payroll Expert

About Our Team

Meet the People Direct team. Our role is to provide first class support for Nordea employees and leaders with HR, salary and system related questions. Our team consists of passionate, ambitious and ready to take action colleagues. We are focused on development and to provide employee service with the highest quality and service culture. The lively and collaborative atmosphere offers plenty of opportunities to learn and grow as you build your career with us.

Collaboration. Ownership. Passion. Courage. These are the values that guide us in how we work and how we make decisions – and that we imagine you share with us.

About The Role

We are seeking an experienced and detail-oriented Senior Payroll Expert to join our team in Sweden. In this role, you will take ownership of end-to-end payroll operations while ensuring full compliance with Swedish legislation, collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), and internal policies.

You will serve as a trusted subject matter expert, supporting both employees and management with payroll-related matters and contributing to continuous process improvements in a dynamic and international environment.

Key responsibilities in this role:

• Own and coordinate end-to-end payroll delivery for Sweden, ensuring accurate and timely execution across the full payroll cycle in Nordea's new operating model
• Ensure full compliance with Swedish labour law, tax regulations, pension frameworks, collective agreements, and internal policies, with strong focus on controls and risk mitigation
• Act as country payroll expert and escalation point for Sweden on complex payroll, employment, and collective agreement matters
• Oversee statutory reporting and payroll cycle readiness, ensuring critical deadlines, cut-offs, and country-specific requirements are met
• Drive collaboration across People Direct, HR, Finance, system teams, and external providers to secure high-quality service delivery
• Lead reconciliations, audits, year-end activities, and payroll-to-finance handovers with strong control evidence
• Drive continuous improvement, standardisation, and simplification of payroll processes, controls, and documentation
• Build understanding of payroll configuration and data setup, identify required changes, and drive implementation
• Provide expert advisory support to leaders and employees through People Direct

The role is based in Stockholm at Smålandsgatan 17 and the work is performed during standard work hours.

Who You Are

This is the right role for you if you are a team player willing to grow and develop in the payroll area. You have analytical skills and a customer mindset.

Your background and skills include:

• Experience with payroll service governance, escalations, and recurring issue resolution
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with ability to explain complex payroll matters clearly and service-oriented in both Swedish and English
• Extensive experience in Swedish payroll at senior, specialist, or advisory level
• Deep expertise in Swedish payroll legislation, tax regulations, and employment law
• Strong track record of interpreting and applying Swedish collective agreements in complex environments
• Proven experience with modern payroll systems and platforms, with focus on accuracy and efficiency
• Highly developed analytical capabilities with exceptional attention to detail
• Demonstrated ability to work autonomously, prioritize effectively, and deliver results in a fast-paced, multi-priority environment

It would be ideal if you also…

• Have experience supporting payroll transformation, standardisation, or post-implementation stabilisation
• Have HR knowledge and experience

What We Offer 

People come here when they want to get somewhere. For some, it’s to take their career to the next level. For others, it’s to break new ground within their area of expertise – in other words, with us, you will always move forward.

A culture that fosters performance and growth in one of the largest Nordic banks, offering various opportunities to evolve, develop and learn from brilliant colleagues with diverse backgrounds in a vibrant working environment.

Hybrid working model – we believe in the value of bringing people together and at the same time we embrace the freedom of flexibility.

Diversity and inclusion are a natural part of our daily work. We know that an inclusive workplace is a sustainable one. We genuinely believe that our diverse backgrounds, experiences, characteristics and traits make us stronger together. Every day we strive to find new ways to improve diversity and inclusion within our community e.g. we have signed the European Diversity Charters in the countries where we operate to show our commitment and engage with others to continue learning and improving.

If this sounds like you, get in touch! If you are passionate about payroll excellence and thrive in a compliance-focused environment, we would love to hear from you.